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Friday, January 17, 2003 |
Voice Over IP Ready for Prime Time?. The Future of Telephony Today
"Yesterday my new Vonage arrived and I am very pleased with the quality. Setup and using it are a snap. Several people I called across the country as well as next door could not tell the difference between my Vonage call and a POTS call....
Installation took all of 15 minutes, including reading all 10 pages of the instructions (I tend to read before hooking together). Hooking it together was a breeze, and should be even for the technologically impaired. The Analog Telephone Adaptor has three connections, one for power, one for an ethernet connection to your router, and a standard phone jack (you can use any standard phone)....
When you sign up with Vonage, they send you an ATA box free. You also need a DHCP and NAT capable router (perhaps future models will let you access and set the IP address yourself - but you can't get better plug and play then the current setup). Vonage can provide a rock bottom cheap router if you need one. You also need broadband (either cable or DSL), of course.
There is a onetime activation fee of $29.99 and an approximately $10 shipping charge. There is no minimum term, but after the 30 day money back guarantee there is a $40 disconnect fee. The bill is charged to your credit card monthly. For $40/month you get unlimited domestic long distance or for $26/month you get unlimited local and 500 minutes of long distance." [LawMeme]
I talked to Ernest this morning on his brand new Vonage connection, and he sounded like he was next door. Way better than cell phones ever sound, and better than a lot of regular phones. Color me impressed. He also talked about how you could get a phone number for any location (a NY resident could get a CA phone number) so that calls could be local for your family, and he even noted that you can take the ATA box on the road with you (for example, if you are staying at a hotel that offers broadband).
Jon Udell also seems pretty happy with Vonage. If we ever figure out the DNS lapses occurring with our cable internet connection, I may take the plunge myself! [The Shifted Librarian]
6:36:36 AM 
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I'll Trade You a Star Wars for Your Lord of the Rings..... Credit Card-Size Hard Drive Can Hold 5GB
"Take a look at one of those credit cards in your wallet. That's the exact size and thickness of an upcoming, revolutionary removable storage device called StorCard.
Created by a company with the same name, StorCard can contain from 100MB to more than 5GB of data on a plastic card. At first glance, it looks like a credit card, and even has a magnetic strip like a credit card, for potential use in standard credit card readers.
The hard disk data, however, is accessed on a tiny spinning disk inside the thin card....
A spinning wheel made of Mylar is engaged when the card is inserted into a StorReader, a USB-connected drive or PC Card that reads and writes to the StorCard. The reader is expected to retail for under $100 and the cards for under $15 each, Heil says.
The StorCard and StorReader are scheduled to become available in the second half of 2003. The company is talking with media producers, and a partnership announcement with a widely recognized producer of blank media is expected in the next month, Heil says.
Amazingly, within the card is an on-board processor containing integrated software controls that can encrypt data securely in real time....
StorCard promises the tiny hard drive will provide high performance to quickly handle large amounts of data. It will support a volume sufficient to stream media files, for example, according to Heil. As a result, the StorCard could store even material that previously would fit only on a DVD." [PC World]
This gives "trading cards" a whole new meaning! And you thought the iPod was slim! I sure hope that's USB 2.0.... [The Shifted Librarian]
6:33:17 AM
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Renaissance Now: Save the Public Domain!. In Eldred v. Ashcroft (previous story), the United States Supreme Court decided that the "limited times" clause in the US constitution should not be taken all too literally. Copyright is now, for all practical purposes, perpetual. Perhaps, if a prolific young writer of your childhood died in a tragic accident immediately after writing his first book, you might actually live to see the release of a "contemporary" work into the public domain. Copyright is "life of the author plus 70 years". We may have lost a battle, but we can still win the war. With Larry Lessig's blessing, I have set up a mailing list (and associated wiki page) devoted to the specific issue of international copyright term reform. This is an issue we can all agree on. This is a cause we can rally around. This is where we can prove if this Internet thing can really make a difference or not. We have to try. [kuro5hin.org]
5:36:35 AM
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My new AirPort blog!: As if you didn't get enough of me already, Adam Engst and I have launched a new Apple AirPort Weblog to cover Apple-specific wireless issues, focused on its AirPort networking system. We felt that there were enough detailed issues of no interest to non-Apple users that a dedicated blog would provoke more news, tips, and discussion. [80211b News]
5:34:12 AM
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Nostalgia. I remember when ...
:: people had surnames instead of screenames.
:: people knew my home address instead of my email address.
:: icons were largely associated with religion.
:: I had to watch the news at night to find out what was happening.
:: I did my Christmas shopping at the mall instead of on Amazon.com
:: instant messaging was in its infancy.
:: dial-up was the only thing you could get.
:: I had a stack of phone books instead of a set of bookmarks in my browser for finding numbers.
:: I last went into the post office to buy stamps.
:: Yahoo! changed the worldwide web.
:: .com was always the end of a url.
:: when beauty.com was sold for lots of money.
:: I saw Hackers for the first time and thought it wasn't all that great.
:: digital cameras were something you sold a major organ to pay for.
:: the debate on whether or not to tax internet sales began.
:: I had to talk with the neighbors, face to face, on the porch with a glass of iced tea to find out the local gossip.
:: long distance phone calls ate up my bill instead of dsl.
:: Compuserve, way back in 1984.
:: every email address I've ever had.
:: every url I've ever had.
:: Java was something people from the city called coffee.
:: when you had to buy music, at the store.
:: when Napster first opened its doors, and when it closed them.
:: I bought my first trinket off ebay, the first of many to come.
:: friends became lost in the shuffle when they moved because I just couldn't be bothered to dropping a letter in the mail.
:: cd burning was something religious groups did when they didn't like 2LiveCrew or NWA compact discs.
:: there wasn't an organization designed to monitor what people were researching.
:: a browser was someone who just went to the store and looked.
:: writing my first term paper using only online sources.
:: building my first home page, utilizing HTMLgoodies.com.
:: everything was still connected with SCSI cords.
:: PDA was against school rules.
:: cookies were served with milk after recess.
:: Blackberry was something you picked in the springtime.
:: IBM and Apple were the only machines on the market.
:: bookmarks were bought at Waldenbooks and designed to hold your page in a book.
:: I entered my first chat room.
:: Netscape was the leading browser.
:: I made my first friend online (and you'e still with me Ali!)
:: I started reading weblogs before they were weblogs.
:: I had to go to a movie to see trailers and previews.
:: the world seemed a lot bigger." [<unit 219>] [The Shifted Librarian]
5:33:08 AM
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TGIF
5:28:43 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Paul W. Swansen.
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